It’s a particularly notable win given it’s the first time poetry has been eligible for the $60,000 prize. “It’s been a really unprecedented response and I’ve been very surprised and honoured that as many people have liked my strange little book,” Araluen said. “I am now a tiny bit terrified about what’s next.”
Established in 2013,the Stella Prize is designed to champion work by Australian women,in response to historical gender bias in literary prizes. The list of previous winners is a who-who’s of our top writers,fiction and non-fiction,including Charlotte Wood and Alexis Wright.
Shortlisted for this year’s prize were Eunice Andrada,Anwen Crawford,Jennifer Down,Lee Lai and Elfie Shiosaki. The judges were Melissa Lucashenko,Declan Fry,Cate Kennedy,Sisonke Msimang and Oliver Reeson.
Bundjalung-born and raised in Dharug country,Araluen saysDropbear was written over several years in response to what she calls settler colonial literature. It’s the stuff Australian children are raised on includingSnugglepot and Cuddlepie,Dot and the KangarooandBlinky Bill. She argues there’s been a resurgence of this material recently,which has shocked her,given how problematic she considers it.
“It’s designed around themes of anti-Australiana,to be in dialogue with ideas of cultural cringe and the kitsch and the ironic and the uncanny in Australia,” she says. “Particularly thinking about the ways as an Aboriginal person I’ve inherited that literary culture,however complicatedly,with however much resistance is to be expected.”
Her work also speaks to other aspects of Australian culture such as the poetry of Banjo Patterson,films such asWake In Frightand Nick Cave’s music.